My car tires had to be changed and rim fixed, so I went to do so last Saturday because the person I knew at the body shop happened to have four tires that fit my car’s rims (some background information and more details on why my tires need to be changed here).
He only charged me his cost of $100 USD to get my rim bended back (the rim was forged, so it was a difficult process so $100 is reasonable). However, I was a little upset because he charged me $80 USD for changing four tires onto new rims and re-mounting them onto my car. I understand that labor is expensive, but being grown up in Canada, we were used to changing tires since we use a different set of tires in the winter for snow driving which only cost $32 CDN. One of the lessons I learned here was to make sure I know how much everything is going to cost before you say “yes”. Because I was getting the four tires free, I did not say anything to the body shop owner as I figured that $80 for four better tires was worth the cost.
I drove home that day thinking that at least I can put this behind me and move on. So the next day when I was ready to go pay the deposit for our “wedding on a boat”, I noticed that one of my tires was flat! I quickly went to the gas station to fill up the tire, but there was definitely a leak since I can hear the air leaking out of the tire if I am close enough to it.
After scrambling to find a tire service center that was opened on Sunday, I was told that it was un-repairable. Those words ruined my day. The good news was that the technician inspected my tires, and also put on my spare tire for me free of charge.
I understand that this was probably not the body shop acquaintance’s fault since there is a good chance that he would not know about the leak. But I needed a solution, so I told him about my story. After apologizing, he suggested that since my original tires were pretty worn out, I should replace it with two new tires. Because of the size of the wheels and that the tires are ultra-high performance ones, each would cost $155 USD for a total of $310 USD.
So once I pay for the two new tires, this whole exercise would cost me $490 USD. So much for saving money by getting four tires for free.
As a side note, I did call other tire shops and the prices of new tires were a bit higher so I will just go to the same body shop.
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This is one of those examples of being penny wise and pound foolish that I have sometimes seen on personal finance blogs that I read. Lord knows we’ve all been foolish enough to jump on a “great deal” without due process, but far more often than not people tend to regret those “great deals” and ultimately wind up paying far more than it would have cost had they done proper research. At least it isn’t really going to cost you all THAT much more money!
GeekMan: You are absolutely correct. I should have gathered all the facts and done enough research first. I will post a picture of my car once I have everything fixed